Book description
The first word of this haunting novel is 'no'. It is how the
narrator, a middle-aged Hungarian Jewish writer, answers an
acquaintance who asks if he has a child and it is how he answered his,
now ex-, wife when she told him she wanted a baby.
The loss, longing, and regret that haunt the years between those two
'no's' give rise to one of the most eloquent meditations ever written
on the Holocaust. As Kertész's narrator addresses the child he
couldn't bear to bring into the world, he takes readers on a
mesmerising, lyrical journey through his life, from his childhood to
Auschwitz to his failed marriage.
Imre Kertész was born in 1929 in Budapest. As a youth, he was
imprisoned in Auschwitz and later in Buchenwald. He worked as a
journalist and playwright before publishing
Fateless,
his first novel, in 1975. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 2002.
